‘Day Dogara stopped breathing’ — Momodu narrates near-death experience of speaker

Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, stopped
breathing at some point in his childhood, forcing neighbours to ask
his father to “bury this boy” as he moved from one health crisis to
the other.

His father, in distress, asked the sympathetic undertakers: “How
can I bury such a promising boy?”

Tired of using local herbs that failed to address his son’s
failing health, the father finally decided to take him to a
hospital in far-away Vom, in present-day Plateau state, where
doctors treated the young boy but suggested that he might die
before his 10th birthday.

These rare stories are contained in his biography, ‘A Reed Made
Flint’, authored by Ovation publisher, Dele Momodu.

The book, made available to only TheCable, is due for public
presentation on December 26, 2017 to mark the 50th birthday of the
speaker.

Saratu, Dogara’s mother, actually thought his son would die —
despite the extraordinary fact that he spent an extra three months
in the womb.

HEALTH CHALLENGE

Momodu wrote: “Such was the frailty of the boy’s health that
most people would even say it to Saratu’s hearing that she was
nurturing a boy doomed to die in infancy. They had their reason.
Dogara was very sickly as a child. Despite its immense healthy
atmosphere, the weather of Gwarangah and this scion of the
Ganawuris were seemingly at eternal loggerheads. The health
challenge worsened when Dogara was five years old. Dogara himself
could not pin-point what was really wrong.”

“I cannot express it,” he told Momody. “But I wasn’t just a
normal child health-wise. I knew something was drastically wrong. I
sometimes had some kind of attacks and in most cases I would faint.
I can’t say what was wrong most of those days until I was taken to
Vom Christian Hospital near Jos. Since I was operated on, many
years after that, I was never sick again.”

“Sometimes in the morning, he would be very healthy, buoyant and
full of life,” Saratu told Momodu. “But by noon, his condition
would suddenly make a volte-face and you would never believe it was
the child that earlier effervesced with life.”

Wherever she was, even when in the church or outside, people
would call her, alerting her, yet again, to her son’s swooning
spell.

“During one of those spells, Dogara actually stopped breathing!”
the author wrote.

‘PROMISING CHILD’

“I remember my mother told me that there was a time he got very
ill and it’s like he passed away,” Naomi, Dogara’s sister,
recalled. “When sympathizers came, they gave my father a grim
prognosis. Someone said to my distraught father: ‘This boy has
died! Why don’t you just look for people to bury him?’ My father
simply replied: ‘How can I bury such a promising child?’”

Momodu wrote: “Yakubu refused to let go. His faith soon paid
off. Dogara rose suddenly from what had looked like deep coma. But
then, again, after this excruciating experience, when hope was
sprouting, Dogara went under the weather badly. And this time
around it truly looked deadly.

“Together with her husband, Saratu fought a hard battle to keep
Dogara alive. Being a farmer, Yakubu had some level of herbal
medicine expertise. When it was looking difficult to sustain Dogara
with orthodox medicine, Yakubu would mix sundry local herbs and
give it to his son. This was efficacious for a season but it soon
came to a point when neither the orthodox and traditional medicine
of Gwarangah would suffice.”

“If we want this boy to survive,” Yakubu told his wife one day.
“Then we must seek medical attention beyond the gates of Zaar
land.”

CLINICAL SCRUTINY

“Anything for my son. Anything as long as it would help him out
of this ordeal!” Saratu said.

That particular ailment led the Ganawuris to take him to distant
Vom, a town outside Jos, some three hundred kilometres away from
Gwarangah.

After much clinical scrutiny and more efficacious cocktail of
medicine, Dogara was able to survive this present ordeal, but with
a caveat: doctors in the Vom Specialist Hospital had a verdict for
Yakubu and Saratu: “When your boy attains the age of ten,” they
were told, “come back to Vom.”

“It was a statement carved in possible innuendos. Did the
doctors feel the worst could still come? Fortunately, the Yakubus
had no further cause to return to Vom so soon. The years passed and
nothing happened. It finally looked like the worst was truly over
for this beloved toddler,” Momodu wrote.

The Cable

Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, stopped
breathing at some point in his childhood, forcing neighbours to ask
his father to “bury this boy” as he moved from one health crisis to
the other.

His father, in distress, asked the sympathetic undertakers: “How
can I bury such a promising boy?”

Tired of using local herbs that failed to address his son’s
failing health, the father finally decided to take him to a
hospital in far-away Vom, in present-day Plateau state, where
doctors treated the young boy but suggested that he might die
before his 10th birthday.

These rare stories are contained in his biography, ‘A Reed Made
Flint’, authored by Ovation publisher, Dele Momodu.

The book, made available to only TheCable, is due for public
presentation on December 26, 2017 to mark the 50th birthday of the
speaker.

Saratu, Dogara’s mother, actually thought his son would die —
despite the extraordinary fact that he spent an extra three months
in the womb.

HEALTH CHALLENGE

Momodu wrote: “Such was the frailty of the boy’s health that
most people would even say it to Saratu’s hearing that she was
nurturing a boy doomed to die in infancy. They had their reason.
Dogara was very sickly as a child. Despite its immense healthy
atmosphere, the weather of Gwarangah and this scion of the
Ganawuris were seemingly at eternal loggerheads. The health
challenge worsened when Dogara was five years old. Dogara himself
could not pin-point what was really wrong.”

“I cannot express it,” he told Momody. “But I wasn’t just a
normal child health-wise. I knew something was drastically wrong. I
sometimes had some kind of attacks and in most cases I would faint.
I can’t say what was wrong most of those days until I was taken to
Vom Christian Hospital near Jos. Since I was operated on, many
years after that, I was never sick again.”

“Sometimes in the morning, he would be very healthy, buoyant and
full of life,” Saratu told Momodu. “But by noon, his condition
would suddenly make a volte-face and you would never believe it was
the child that earlier effervesced with life.”

Wherever she was, even when in the church or outside, people
would call her, alerting her, yet again, to her son’s swooning
spell.

“During one of those spells, Dogara actually stopped breathing!”
the author wrote.

‘PROMISING CHILD’

“I remember my mother told me that there was a time he got very
ill and it’s like he passed away,” Naomi, Dogara’s sister,
recalled. “When sympathizers came, they gave my father a grim
prognosis. Someone said to my distraught father: ‘This boy has
died! Why don’t you just look for people to bury him?’ My father
simply replied: ‘How can I bury such a promising child?’”

Momodu wrote: “Yakubu refused to let go. His faith soon paid
off. Dogara rose suddenly from what had looked like deep coma. But
then, again, after this excruciating experience, when hope was
sprouting, Dogara went under the weather badly. And this time
around it truly looked deadly.

“Together with her husband, Saratu fought a hard battle to keep
Dogara alive. Being a farmer, Yakubu had some level of herbal
medicine expertise. When it was looking difficult to sustain Dogara
with orthodox medicine, Yakubu would mix sundry local herbs and
give it to his son. This was efficacious for a season but it soon
came to a point when neither the orthodox and traditional medicine
of Gwarangah would suffice.”

“If we want this boy to survive,” Yakubu told his wife one day.
“Then we must seek medical attention beyond the gates of Zaar
land.”

CLINICAL SCRUTINY

“Anything for my son. Anything as long as it would help him out
of this ordeal!” Saratu said.

That particular ailment led the Ganawuris to take him to distant
Vom, a town outside Jos, some three hundred kilometres away from
Gwarangah.

After much clinical scrutiny and more efficacious cocktail of
medicine, Dogara was able to survive this present ordeal, but with
a caveat: doctors in the Vom Specialist Hospital had a verdict for
Yakubu and Saratu: “When your boy attains the age of ten,” they
were told, “come back to Vom.”

“It was a statement carved in possible innuendos. Did the
doctors feel the worst could still come? Fortunately, the Yakubus
had no further cause to return to Vom so soon. The years passed and
nothing happened. It finally looked like the worst was truly over
for this beloved toddler,” Momodu wrote.

The Cable